Re: [oss4lib-discuss] OAI-1.0 released

>
> Good news, all. Version 1.0 of The Open Archives Initiative Protocol
for
> Metadata Harvesting is up and available, and today's the day of the big
> public forum in DC. The protocol is available here:
>
> http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/openarchivesprotocol.htm
>
> ...anyone here attend the meeting? Would love to hear about it.
>
>
I attended the meeting. IMO, it's a very good example of a protocol that
tackles an amount of work that can actually be accomplished, without
overreaching. Most of the people from alpha test sites who implemented
support for the harvester on their own archives made a point of saying
that it was pretty easy to implement. (The one site that actually
implemented a harvester pointed out that that end was a little harder to
work on.) The protocol should be frozen for the next 12-18 months, giving
people a chance to jump in and play without having to keep up with changes
in the spec for a while.
Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling@...

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Good news, all. Version 1.0 of The Open Archives Initiative Protocol for
Metadata Harvesting is up and available, and today's the day of the big
public forum in DC. The protocol is available here:
http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/openarchivesprotocol.htm
...anyone here attend the meeting? Would love to hear about it.
Hoorah for Herbert and Carl and all those involved!
-Dan

>
> Good news, all. Version 1.0 of The Open Archives Initiative Protocol
for
> Metadata Harvesting is up and available, and today's the day of the big
> public forum in DC. The protocol is available here:
>
> http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/openarchivesprotocol.htm
>
> ...anyone here attend the meeting? Would love to hear about it.
>
>
I attended the meeting. IMO, it's a very good example of a protocol that
tackles an amount of work that can actually be accomplished, without
overreaching. Most of the people from alpha test sites who implemented
support for the harvester on their own archives made a point of saying
that it was pretty easy to implement. (The one site that actually
implemented a harvester pointed out that that end was a little harder to
work on.) The protocol should be frozen for the next 12-18 months, giving
people a chance to jump in and play without having to keep up with changes
in the spec for a while.
Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling@...

Thomas Dowling (tdowling@...) wrote:
>> Good news, all. Version 1.0 of The Open Archives Initiative Protocol for
>> Metadata Harvesting is up and available, and today's the day of the big
>> public forum in DC. The protocol is available here:
>>
>> http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/openarchivesprotocol.htm
>>
>> ...anyone here attend the meeting? Would love to hear about it.
>
> I attended the meeting. IMO, it's a very good example of a protocol that
> tackles an amount of work that can actually be accomplished, without
> overreaching. Most of the people from alpha test sites who implemented
> support for the harvester on their own archives made a point of saying
> that it was pretty easy to implement. (The one site that actually
> implemented a harvester pointed out that that end was a little harder to
> work on.) The protocol should be frozen for the next 12-18 months, giving
> people a chance to jump in and play without having to keep up with changes
> in the spec for a while.
I attended the meeting as well, and I can share my experiences as well.
As you may or may not already know OAI stands for Open Archive Initiative.
Its purpose is to provide a means for disseminating and collecting META
data. Its home page should be at the following URL:
http://www.openarchives.org/
Essentially, the meeting was broken up into two parts. The first part was a
description of the protocol given by Herbert Van de Sompel and Carl Lagoze.
The second part of the meeting included short presentations from
alpha-testers of the protocol. The protocol is considered version 1.0 as of
yesterday, and as Thomas said, it is intended to be frozen for a period of
about 1 year while people play and explore with its possibilities.
Again, the purpose of the protocol is to "harvest" META data. It is
implemented on top of the HTTP protocol and seemingly rather easy to get
running. The protocol consists of six (or so) "verbs":
1) GetRecord
2) Identify
3) ListIdentifiers
4) ListMetadtaFormats
5) ListRecords
6) ListSets
Each verb is intended to be sent by a "service provider" to a "repository".
After a verb (command) is sent the repository responds with an XML file
whose schema is defined by the specification. For example a service provider
(harvester) would send something like this to a repository:
http://mylibrary.lib.ncsu.edu/oai/?verb=Identify
In response, the repository would would come back and describe who and what
it was all about.
Another example might include this:
http://mylibrary.lib.ncsu.edu/oai/?verb=GetRecord&Identifier
=oai:mylibrary:0001&metadataPrefix=oai_dc
This says, "send me record #0001 from MyLibrary, and make sure the XML
output that you send me is in Dublin Core."
The protocol can support a multitude of META data schemes, but each
repository and service provider must support, at the very least, Dublin
Core.
Once a service provider has gathered the META data from one or more
repositories, it is up the the service provider to figure out what to do
with the data. In most cases, people envision federated search services
against harvested content as one type of service. Another service might be a
current awareness service. It would be possible to create a "add this items
to MyLibrary" sort of service.
There were a few, not many, skeptics in the crowd because this is not the
first time these "harvest" protocols have been articulated. The difference
between this protocol and the previous one, IMHO, may be its institutional
backing and the wider audience of possible adopters. For example, the alpha
testers included people from the museum community, pre-print archives,
libraries, and data stores. While the previous protocols work, they may have
been "ahead of their time" and the OAI may be simply at the right place at
the right time.
--
Eric Lease Morgan
NCSU Libraries
http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/staff/morgan/